Tribeca Film Festival Breaks Out From the Screen

The new transmedia projects involve both in-person and online audiences.

Films touch people in many ways but at this year's Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) the Storyscapes installations allow people to touch films. Curated by Ingrid Kopp, director of TFF digital initiatives, the five projects occupy the Bombay Sapphire-sponsored House of Imagination on Varick Street in New York's West Village.

These transmedia projects are new to the festival, Kopp said to PCMag, but in keeping with its spirit while extending film to interactive storytelling. What the five diverse selections share in common is the participatory nature of both online and installation versions.

The projects are split among two white-walled, blue-lit rooms. In the first room you use two tablets to add your hand-drawn creations to This Exquisite Forest, get a feel for the effects of Hurricane Sandy inside Sandy Storyline, and mix fan videos to remake The Empire Strikes Back. Travelling on to the second room, you're greeted by a line of tiny cardboard robots called BlabDroids' filming their own documentary as part of the Robots in Residence project. If you want to escape the BlabDroids probing questions, you can duck into the cocoon-like A Journal of Insomnia to gauge the sleep habits of both yourself and others.

One of the five installations will be awarded the Bombay Sapphire Award for Transmedia on the awards night for the festival, April 25. Storyscapes is open to visitors from April 19 to April 21 but if you can't visit you can still participate, whether it's receiving a call in the middle of the night for some empathy-inducing insomnia, or building on the drawings of artists such as Olafur Eliasson from the Tate Modern. Browse through our gallery to see what's on view and to step inside some of the selections for a closer look.

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Robots in Residence

Robots in Residence

While films are premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, some of the tiniest attendees are making their own movie. The BlabDroids are small cardboard-bodied robots with the voice of a 7-year-old. Their disarming nature lures people into answering their 17 questions, including "Who do you love most in the world?" and "What is the worst thing you have ever done to someone?" The BlabDroids were Alex Reben's thesis at MIT, part of which concerned the ELIZA effect. Reben said each of the BlabDroids costs about $800 and three days to build. After interviewing Tribeca Film Festival attendees, the BlabDroids will make their own documentary and screen it on April 21st.